Since the implementation of the “Law on the Exclusion of Reactionary Ideology and Culture” last year, North Korea has started to strongly sweep away the influence of South Korean culture, including the use of language in Film and Television culture, especially South Korean dramas, which are popular in North Korea and have become a thorn in the side of the North Korean authorities. The authorities even said that the most serious threat of “death penalty” is to disseminate South Korean movies and dramas at will, and those who watch them will be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison.
According to a recent North Korean party newspaper, North Korean authorities are calling on the public to use the orthodox “Pyongyang dialect” to resist cultural aggression. Moreover, some young defectors say that the language habits of young North Koreans in recent years have indeed been mixed with the buzzwords used by young South Koreans, such as “오빠” and “자기야”.
The official North Korean media “Labor News” published an article yesterday (7), “Use Pyongyang cultural language actively,” calling on people to use elegant and civilized language habits, and emphasizing the power of promoting sound social development this Time. The article also said, “The use of Pyongyang language can uphold national orthodoxy and defend against the aggression from unsound thinking, culture and Life.”
In other articles in the news, it is also stipulated that the clothing, hair and makeup of North Korean residents must conform to modesty and elegance and meet the requirements and perceptions of society, rather than focusing on their own appearance preferences. The article emphasizes that modesty in dress and appearance is an important issue in terms of morality. At the same time, the article also called on people to focus on socialism and oppose the waste and luxury of capitalism.
The South Korean media, Chosun Ilbo, said that the North Korean official media published such an article to the public for several days because of the “Korean language habits” in North Korea. A young man who studied at a university in Pyongyang, North Korea, and finally left the country in 2019, revealed that when he was at a university in North Korea, he could only call his opponent “동무” or “동지”, but in 2019, after the North and South Koreans renewed their communication, North Koreans started to use “동무” and “동지”. After the exchange, North Koreans began to use Korean words like “오빠” and “자기야”, and after the 2019 Korean drama “Love’s Descent” was introduced to North Korea, local people even imitated lines from the drama, like “Are you a general?” (네가장군님이니?) This is the reason why the North Korean official media has been emphasizing the importance of “Pyongyang dialect” recently.
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